A new house for $1,000?

The interior of the house designed as part of MIT's 1K House project (Ying chee Chui)

Architects from MIT have designed a house they say would cost about as much as a used car to build.

They call it the Pinwheel House, and it was developed through the “1K House” project, an effort to see if homes for the poor can be built for $1,000. The project focused on affordable housing for areas hit by natural disasters.

Architecture graduate Ying chee Chui designed the prototype in 2009 for a class that launched the affordable home project. It was constructed in Sichuan Province, China, and the actual cost was just under $6,000.

Chui’s house is 800 square feet and has a modular layout with rectangular room units surrounding a central courtyard. It has hollow brick walls reinforced by steel bars, wooden box beams and is intended to withstand a magnitude 8.0 earthquake.

The idea is catching on. At MIT, at least.

A new class this fall is aiming to design a series of homes for Japan that would cost $10,000 to build.